"They are often original, and witty, your rapscallions!" said Leon.

"Do you belong to the police?" asked Gazonal, eying with uneasy
curiosity the hard, impassible little man, who was dressed like the
third clerk in a sheriff's office.

"Which police do you mean?" asked Fromenteau.

"There are several?"

"As many as five," replied the man. "Criminal, the head of which was
Vidoeq; secret police, which keeps an eye on the other police, the
head of it being always unknown; political police,--that's Fouche's.
Then there's the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, the palace
police (of the Emperor, Louis XVIII., etc.), always squabbling with
that of the quai Malaquais. It came to an end under Monsieur Decazes.
I belonged to the police of Louis XVIII.; I'd been in it since 1793,
with that poor Contenson."

The four gentlemen looked at each other with one thought: "How many
heads he must have brought to the scaffold!"

"Now-a-days, they are trying to get on without us. Folly!" continued
the little man, who began to seem terrible. "Since 1830 they want
honest men at the prefecture! I resigned, and I've made myself a small
vocation by arresting for debt."

"He is the right arm of the commercial police," said Gaillard in
Bixiou's ear, "but you can never find out who pays him most, the
debtor or the creditor."